


The Shadow on the Stone

by meansofdistraction



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: AU Julia lives Demelza dies, F/M, Season 1 Episode 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meansofdistraction/pseuds/meansofdistraction
Summary: “Demelza,” he said, worry only just sharpening the syllables of his wife’s name. No reply came from her, and a discordant note struck in his head. Suddenly wide awake, he rose from his chair to kneel at her bedside. “Demelza?”
Relationships: Demelza Carne & Dwight Enys, Demelza Carne/Ross Poldark, Dwight Enys & Ross Poldark
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

Ross woke in that sudden way that left no time between sleep and wakefulness. 

He’d meant to sit up and keep vigil at his wife’s side through the night, but his reserves were wearing thin. He was so very tired.

On their bed, Demelza was resting on her back, her face turned away from him. He did not see any rise of fall of her chest. She was uncommonly still.

“Demelza,” he said, worry only just sharpening the syllables of his wife’s name. No reply came from her, and a discordant note struck in his head. Suddenly wide awake, he rose from his chair to kneel at her bedside. “Demelza?”

He grasped her fingers, almost pleading, but they were cold. They were limp. Ice water shot through his vains. His heart in his throat, he knelt beside her on the bed and shook her shoulders gently. Her head lolled. 

“Oh—“ he gasped at once, the floor falling from beneath him, his stomach dropping in a sickening free fall, “Oh, God. Jesus. No, no—!”

But he could go on no longer. It was all he could do to breathe. Ross gasped for air. It was wet and choked. He sounded like a drowning man trying for his last breath, like a newborn foal sputtering its first inhale. The first breath, a second, and then a third. He couldn’t make a rhythm of it; his eyes stung and filled and his lungs were locked in place and something froze ice cold in his chest. 

And, quite unbidden, the thick words that had stuck in his throat came out as hoarse, wretched sobs. Demelza’s eyes were open, glassy, but she was not looking at him. Why? Why? She never would again. His forehead pressed to hers, and he turned his nose against her cheek where her feverish flush was already beginning to fade. He cried and keened into her hair. He held her against him and rocked her back and forth. 

Ross wanted to die. Right there, right then, with her. He knew he could not go on living now. He knew there was nothing left.

“Demelza,” he sobbed into her neck and felt as if the words were being torn from his chest, “Don’t go away. Don’t leave.”

He shuddered and sobbed and tried to find a breathing rhythm for an eternity before he could get a hold of his lungs. This was to be his last moment with her.

He kissed her cheek. Her lips, her eyes. His face was wet, and he left a trail of watery tears wherever his skin glanced hers.

How many times had he kissed those cheeks or that mouth? How many times had he made these lips stretch into a smile? How long would it be before he saw it again?

“Ross,” croaked a voice behind him, and he turned to see Dwight. He looked wrecked. The dark circles underlining his eyes were some of the worse Ross had ever seen. His hair was uncharacteristically mussed, and his clothes wrinkled. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years, not the five days he’d been at Nampara.

He didn’t know what to say. Dwight’s eyes were red rimmed and wet. For a ridiculous moment, he wanted to shield Demelza from his view; it seemed a very private affair, his wife’s deathbed. His wife’s body.

Ross did not answer or move. He could not speak even if he wanted to, and he couldn’t leave his wife now. Dwight crossed the room and stood behind him, resting a hand on his friend’s left shoulder.

“Ross,” began Dwight again, and this time he could hear the tears in the doctor’s voice, “I am so sorry.”

Ross bowed his head in acknowledgment, gritting his teeth to rein in his emotion. He would be hearing those very same words repeated by many others quite often in the near future. For the first time since he had grabbed Demelza’s cold hand, the outside world and its implications occurred to him. A thousand thoughts went through his head. 

He squeezed her fingers in his, not sure if he were trying to reassure himself or her. It was an unconscious gesture; indeed, he was not even aware that he had been holding her hand all this time.

“And Julia?” he rasped quietly.

Dwight gave him a tight lipped smile. “On the mend. Her fever has broken, and she should be all better by the morning.”

He could not summon the emotion for happiness or even relief. He turned back to face his wife and wondered what he would give to hear the same news of her. 

He wanted to thank Dwight, but the words would not come.

“Leave us.” he found himself saying instead.

“I—“ Dwight started before closing his mouth and again pressing his lips together. He shook his head, as if to rid himself of a thought. He nodded at Ross and gave Demelza a long, lingering glance. His eyes were filling with tears again. He looked so sad. Ross thought he might speak again, but then Dwight was making his way across the room and closing the door behind him.

Once alone, Ross pressed the palm of her right hand to the scar on his cheek. He felt his eyes sting again. This was worse than any fever dream or nightmare. This was permanent and real, and he already knew that his every day and night after this one would bear the consequences.

For now though, he granted himself half an hour more to stay with her. He turned his face into the hand he held to his cheek and kissed it. He then put it at his chest and laid beside her on their bed. Let him tell himself she was sleeping for half an hour more.


	2. Chapter 2

Ross left his bedroom more exhausted than he had ever been in his entire life.

He wandered into the parlor, his feet knowing the way without having to be told, where he found Prudie gently bouncing Julia on her knee, and Jud sitting beside her with his head in his hands. Ross’s chair, the best chair in the room, the one Jud always chose for himself, was unoccupied. Demelza’s usual place, he noticed with a painful twist in his heart, was also carefully empty. The couple had taken the rickety old bench by the window. No one ever sat there unless every other seat was taken, and it made him unreasonably angry. 

Even Jud and Prudie, the most miserable, worthless, backward, and tactless servants in the world could not pretend that nothing had happened. He hated them. 

Prudie watched him with tearful eyes, and Jud looked up at the sound of his shuffling footsteps, for the first time in his life appearing sober. Sober as a judge and just as somber. Ross did not look at his child for fear of seeing her mother’s eyes reflected back at him.

Demelza, he knew, was still in their bed, still as a statue, and beginning to lose her color. He had drawn her eyelids closed so as not to see the terrible emptiness they revealed while open. Her green eyes had resembled the Hendrawna surf on particularly sunny days and had always had a spark of humour or liveliness in them. He had thought them the most beautiful things in the world, but they seemed grey and empty in death. The sight of them was enough to turn his stomach. It was an image that stuck with him even now, and to shake it, he turned away from the three to stare out the window.

Jud, surprisingly, was the one to speak. His voice was cautious yet sincere. “Cap’n Ross, we be ever so —“ 

“Where is Dr. Enys.” Ross tonelessly interrupted even as he spotted the physician and two other men approaching the house just around the bend.

He watched them for a few seconds while Prudie stuttered that the doctor did say he would be right back, he did, sir, so he need only wait one moment more.

Ross said nothing to this, barely heard it, even. He wondered why he had left the bedroom. To see Julia? He couldn’t look at her. To talk to Dwight? There was nothing left to say, for there was nothing that remained of which to be spoken.

No, he had left because Demelza lay not where her body did. She was not here in the parlor, either. And though he felt the urge to check in the kitchen or barn, he knew he could walk every field, path, and beach of Nampara and not find her.

He was still staring out the window when he heard a strange voice address him. The familiar Cornish accent shook him to his core. 

“Brother,” said the wavering voice, “Be it true?”

Ross blinked and turned to face him, where he was surprised to see Dwight and Zacky Martin as well. They had walked the half mile he’d spotted them from in no time at all, it seemed. His thoughts had been far away.

He stared uncomprehendingly at the stranger and fancied he recognized something not unfamiliar in his features. But no, he was fooling himself, seeing what he wanted to see. He looked to Dwight for explanation.

“This is your brother-in-law, Ross,” Dwight clarified, “By some chance, he asked me for directions to Nampara along my way to the Martins’.”

Zacky Martin did not explain his presence. “What a black day this is,” he said to Ross, his hands gripping and twisting his hat, “I cannot tell ‘ee how sorry I am.”

Ross now looked at Zacky, one of his oldest and dearest friends, blankly. He felt nothing but regret that Dwight had saw fit to bring two more people into his home.

“Excuse me, sir, but I must know,” burst out his apparent brother-in-law in obvious distress, “You are Captain Poldark? This is Nampara?”

Ross felt a deep regret for what he had to tell the boy. He knew there was no mistake, that this was Demelza’s brother, for the manner of their speaking, the shape of their mouths, and the curl of their hair were all the same. It did not seem fair that he had to break the news, but he meant to do it as gently as possible.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “And I am very sorry to tell you that your sister Demelza, my wife, died not two hours past.”

The stranger’s face crumpled. Instantaneously, it seemed, his eyes filled and overflowed with tears and his nose streamed snot. One hand came to cradle his face while the other gripped his heart as if it were going to burst. He sobbed out loud.

It struck Ross that he was seeing a perfect reflection of how he himself felt in his brother-in-law. He swallowed thickly, and knew if he did not contain himself now he would be in the same state as the young man before him. 

“I was just coming to tell her—“ the stranger gasped, the hand on his face moving to drag back his hair, “that, that, that Father— our father—“

“Take a seat,” Ross commanded more out of habit than intention.

The stranger dropped into Demelza’s chair and its carefully embroidered pillows. Ross swallowed a biting reprimand, for he knew she wouldn’t have minded. 

“T’is a black, black day,” echoed Jud in a mutter, Zacky nodding in agreement as Ross’s brother-in-law tried to rein in his tears.

“I can help,” said the young man, getting a hold of himself and looking almost imploringly at Ross, “I can help. What would ‘ee have me do?”

The question startled him. Ross, who always knew his own mind and who always had a plan in motion could not see beyond what was in front of him and could not think beyond the maddening throb in his head beating out Demelza is dead, Demelza is dead, Demelza is dead. Help him? What could this stranger do for Ross? He had no reply to give his brother-in-law because Ross knew the answer was absolutely nothing.

Dwight stepped in where Ross fell short.

“I have sent word to Reverend Odgers about arrangements to be made,” he said, “We will soon be notified of the date and time. For now, we must begin on the—“ he stumbled over the word, his eyes flicking to Ross, “On the coffin.”

Ross closed his eyes to blink away the hot tears that sprang afresh. He wanted to die, for Demelza was to be taken from him even now.

The words had similarly affected his brother-in-law, who leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees and drop his head in his hands. 

But, just as he did, he jerked his head up and said, “I must see her. Tell me where she be.”

It seemed to Ross that the world was spinning maddeningly onward while he was cemented to one time and place. All these people and their thoughts and plans and sorrows— what was the point of them? Their questions were of no importance to him.

Except. Except his one. This strange boy with his dirty clothes and tear-streaked face wanted to go into the bedroom he had shared with his wife for years. Where not two hours before he had sat at her bedside and startled awake from a dream to find her unmoving. 

Ross couldn’t think of anywhere he would like to take some unfamiliar unkempt teenaged miner less. It was private. It was private! Why could none of them see this? Let them leave him alone. Let him catch the fever now so he could perish too. Take this boy to see his wife? It was impossible, and yet at the same time he knew it was what she would have wanted.

He had taken too long to answer; everyone’s eyes were on him.

“Which brother are you then?” Ross sighed resignedly.

The young man stood up. “Sam, sir.”

“Follow me, Sam.”

He led him upstairs, and again his feet led him while his mind drifted far away. The last time he had climbed these steps he was bone-weary but determined to see Demelza through the night.

Outside the door where he had stopped and Sam moved to go in, Ross grabbed his brother-in-law’s forearm tighter than he’d meant to. 

“You’ll not touch her. This is a sick house. She died of a fever.”

Sam nodded his head in solemn promise. His eyes were deep and sad, and Ross looked away so the younger man could not see the seething anger in his own. He was doing this for his wife, but even his generosity for her had bounds. It was stupid and possessive of him, but he would not have anyone else touching Demelza now. 

He watched from the doorway as Sam lowered himself at his sister’s side, sinking to his knees in much the same way Ross had not long before. The young man folded his hands and brought them to his lips as he murmured a prayer. 

Ross‘s gaze drifted, settling on his wife’s fiery hair and her well-worked, well-loved hands. He felt himself to be still there kneeling on the bed and shaking her shoulders and seeing for the first time that she was not sleeping.

Sam stayed for only a few minutes. Ross all the while watched Demelza’s still form and again told himself that she was, in fact, asleep, forcefully imagining that her chest was rising and falling with inhales and exhales. In his fragile world, nothing had changed. She was simply sleeping late. The day was normal and new, and soon he’d find her signing in the kitchen kneeding the dough for tonight’s’ supper. Nothing would be different.

Sam shattered his precious imaginings by standing abruptly and stalking out of the room. He would be going down, then, to the yard where Ross already had heard Dwight, Jud, and Zacky Martins’ voices mixing with the sawing of wood and hammering of nails. 

Her casket.

He walked quietly to his wife so as not to wake her and took Sam’s vacated spot at the bedside, finally letting the tears fall. He felt his face contort with the pain he felt in his chest, in his heart. Her coffin was being built outside. Her skin was becoming a chalky white. He could no longer say to himself that she was dozing peacefully.

He loved her just as he had when she was alive. He loved her still, his very life, and she was dead. This, he knew already, would never change. There was nothing to be done. There was nothing he could do— no woman who could take her place, no balm to soothe his hurt, no person on all the earth who could repair the world that had crashed at his feet.

The pain was overwhelming and violent.   
The thought of burying Demelza made him fall forward sobbing on the bed, his head in his hands. He would have preferred to have his ribs kicked in than to feel the aching hell in his chest. He bit down hard on the fist of his right hand to muffle his terrible, grief-stricken cries. 

He’d thought he’d known pain when a musket ball to shattered his ankle. Now he knew pain, real pain, pain that would last his lifetime. Nothing was worth this. Nothing. Let him be a soldier again, let him hear Demelza’s voice, let him die. Anything, anything but this.

Then a thought struck him.

Ross bit harder into his knuckles, the rough edges of his great sorrow sharpening into anger. Demelza was dead, and someone had to answer for it. 

And it was Francis. It was Francis who had caused the events that led it up to this. It was Francis who had given Demelza the sickness.


End file.
